


connect/uphold/protect

by ScreechTheMighty



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies), Titanfall
Genre: Gen, Pacific Rim if it was in Titanfall basically, Raleigh is a Titan, Tags to be added as fic progresses, universe fusion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 08:40:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14101599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScreechTheMighty/pseuds/ScreechTheMighty
Summary: To Drift with someone, to really connect, you have totrustthem.A broken Jaeger Class Titan and a mechanic with dreams of being a pilot meet as the Militia is on the verge of facing potential destruction, and learn the bonds that form beyond the demands of protocol are the most powerful.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I know...I know I have another fic I should've updated like two weeks ago...I know...but Titanfall still Owns My Ass and between the pre-PacRim2 Hype and the post-PacRim2 Melancholy I just had to work on this for my own sanity. It didn't help that my brain kept making too many gosh darn parallels. Updates will probably be slow, but you should expect that from me by now.

This was the final stored memory of GD-0712, nicknamed Raleigh.

The IMC had unleashed another wave of their new biological weapons, nicknamed Kaiju. He and Pilot Yancy Becket were dispatched to ward off the attack. It was supposed to be a simple mission.

It wasn’t.

Yancy had suggested they move away from their original combat zone to protect a local civilian convoy. Raleigh had agreed; they wouldn’t be far from their mission objective, and the lives saved were worth any potential risk. The risks had seemed minimal, anyway. It was only one Kaiju, a large one, certainly, but nothing they couldn’t handle.

They thought they had defeated the Kaiju, but as the convoy pulled away, it ambushed them, bleeding heavily from its wounds but still alive. Raleigh would have noted the Kaiju’s increased durability for the record had he not been so busy attempting to combat it. To protect his pilot.

Protocol three.

Titans didn’t feel pain, strictly speaking. They received alerts that warned them of severe damage. Yancy always referred to it as being in pain, and Raleigh had never disagreed. But it wasn’t the same as human pain. For example: if he had been able to feel pain, he would have been crippled by the wave of alerts set off by the Kaiju tearing into his torso.

“ _Severe hull damage. Left arm severed. My core is intact, but I don’t know for how much longer.”_

_“ **Shit…** Raleigh listen to me…!”_

Titans weren’t supposed to feel emotional pain.

But Titans were also programmed to be adaptable, in particular Vanguard Class Titans, of which the Jaeger Class was a subtype. Titans were programmed to bond with their pilots to increase combat effectiveness. All Titans were programmed to protect their pilots at all costs. Failure to do so was a breach of protocol three—one of the fundamental aspects of his being.

When the Kaiju attacked again, its knife-like snout pierced his chest cavity, his cockpit. Yancy’s biological readings suddenly spiked, then flatlined. Protocol three errors collided with the errors about the severe structural damage done to his chassis. Behind protocol three errors was a blip in the programming; a genuine, strong reaction to the sudden loss of a partner that the Titan’s original programmers hadn’t planned for.

He unloaded the entire clip into the Kaiju’s chest before collapsing himself.

When the Militia forces found them, Raleigh was barely-functional, crumpled onto his knees, hands cradling his cockpit as though trying to keep his innards inside him. In reality, he was trying to keep Yancy’s lifeless body inside the cockpit. A last, desperate attempt to keep the pilot safe.

He said only one word: “Yancy…Yancy… _Yancy_ …”

He was completely inoperable not long after they removed Yancy from his chassis.

There were no more memories for five years, four months.


	2. Five Years, Four Months

Mako Mori stepped back and examined the Titan chassis.

There hadn’t been much left of the original. The left arm was almost completely gone; what was left was good for scrap and not much else. There was still a gaping hole in the torso and cockpit. The remnants of the body had started to succumb to rust and lack of maintenance. It seemed cruel to re-insert the personality core when the body was still in this state, but they had to make sure all the re-wiring she’d done had worked.

“I can’t believe he got in this bad a state,” Hercules Hansen said somewhere behind her as Marshal Stacker Pentecost stepped forward, the data core in his hands. “I knew him when he was operational, him and Yancy. They made a good team. Shame seeing him like this.”

“We’ll get him in working order again.” Stacker passed her the core. “Be careful. This one had a rough history. He might be confused when he wakes up.”

Mako understood. She’d read the file on GD-0712. Last time he’d been active, he’d lost his pilot. That was part of the reason he’d never been functional again after the failed mission--that and they didn’t have a chassis to put him in. Vanguard Class Titans were rare to begin with, and the Jaeger line was especially difficult to acquire.

Now, with their reserves on Marianas almost spent, they didn’t have any choice but to return to old carcasses and potentially unstable data cores.

Mako stepped forward. The core had the Titan’s designation painted on its side. Underneath that was something else, a word scrawled in paint that had almost completely faded. All she could make out was _R l gh._

_I’ll ask him what that means when he wakes up._

She inserted the core back into the Titan and stepped back.

Mako wasn’t sure what she was expecting—a sudden violent outburst, perhaps, or for the Titan to start immediately demanding to know where he was and what had happened to his old pilot. Instead, the core began installing itself without any incident. The only sound was the whirring of machinery as the Titan—to the best of his abilities with both legs disabled—straightened up. His optical sensor adjusted, flaring up with golden light as it took in the three of them.

The Titan seemed to be fully operational, but didn’t said a word.

“…his voice box still works, right?” Herc asked quietly.

Before Mako could reply, the Titan did it for her. “My voice box still works,” he replied. Mako was taken aback; the Titan’s voice was less deep than any Titan she’d encountered. It was nothing like Stacker’s own Legion-class Titan had been. “Pilot Hansen. Marshal Pentecost, sir.”

“Hello, Titan.” Stacker spoke carefully, calmly. “How are you feeling?”

“Left arm severed. Severe hull damage. Systems at 50% capacity.” The Titan’s eye adjusted repeatedly, focusing on Stacker, on Herc, on Mako. “Yancy…Pilot Becket is deceased.”

It wasn’t a question. Moreover, she heard a distinctive note of grief in the Titan’s voice. Mako glanced up at Stacker. He didn’t seem surprised. “I know,” Stacker said. “I’m sorry.”

Silence followed. The Titan’s eye focused on Mako again. “Are you going to assign me a new pilot?” he asked finally.

“Not right now. We have to get you up and running first. This is Mako Mori. She’ll be overseeing your repairs personally.” Stacker rested a hand on her shoulder. “She’s one of our brightest. You’ll be in good hands.”

Mako felt a surge of pride at the words, but kept the emotion to herself. It was a bit more difficult to hide her confusion when the Titan spoke again: “And then you’ll assign me a new pilot.”

The words didn’t confuse her; what confused her was the fact that the Titan didn’t seem happy about it.

“Yes, then we’ll assign you a new pilot.” Stacker sighed faintly, his hand falling away from Mako’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about that now. We’re still looking at potential candidates.”

The Titan didn’t say anything.

Mako glanced at Stacker again; he seemed a bit more caught off-guard by this, but recovered quickly. “Miss Mori, if you have any questions, you know where I am. Herc?”

Herc was looking at the Titan with sympathy in his eyes, but he didn’t say anything as he followed Stacker away from the Titan. GD-0712 watched the two of them leave before turning his attention back to Mako. “How bad is it?” he asked.

Mako frowned. “Excuse me?”

“The situation must be bad if he’s re-activating me. I don’t think I’d be his first choice.”

The Titan’s speech was unusual. There was an almost human cadence to the voice. The tone was too mechanized to be fully human, but he was far more conversational than any other Titan she’d met. “We were not able to acquire many new Titans for this mission,” Mako said. She saw no reason to lie to him. “You had the most intact chassis. It made the most sense to repair you.”

The Titan blinked—or as much an approximation of a blink as he could manage, his primary ocular sensor shuttering partially shut and opening rapidly. “Thank you, Miss Mori.”

“For what?”

“Your honesty. Gipsy Danger Zero-Seven-One-Two reporting for duty.” His one functional arm jerked slightly, creaking as the Titan flexed his hand. “As much as I can, anyway.”

He wasn’t what she’d expected. But that was okay, Mako decided. She still got to work on a Vanguard Class Titan, and that was something new. She could handle any personality quirks he threw at her. “Mako Mori. We’ll start with the rust.”

“Going to make me good as new, Miss Mori?”

That got a small smile out of her—small and determined. “Better than new,” she promised.

She’d always liked a challenge.

+++++

Mako Mori spent most of that evening removing the rust that had accumulated on what was left of his chassis. Raleigh used that time to consider that final memory before he had gone offline.

Yancy Becket was gone. His pilot was gone. Raleigh had violated Protocol Three in the worst, most permanent way possible. The time between Yancy’s death and his re-awakening meant that the neural link between them had long gone cold. In theory, that should have meant he didn’t feel any negative emotions. He no longer had a pilot; therefore he could not receive protocol three errors.

But he had felt Yancy’s vitals flatline. That memory was still stored in his core. He’d only had one pilot; he and Yancy had been together for four years before his death.

Four years was a long time.

So was five years, four months.

“Miss Mori,” Raleigh said. The tool she was using powered down as Mako Mori stepped back into view. “What is my new mission?”

She hesitated, examining him curiously. She was shorter than Yancy had been, leaner, but she carried herself with a similar confidence. “The IMC has increased production of their biological weapons. We’re here to destroy their primary manufacturing plant,” she said. “I don’t know much beyond that.”

Raleigh considered this with some confusion. “We’ve tried to hit the plant before. We’ve never been able to make it through.” He had never been personally involved in these missions but he had read the debriefings. The place was a fortress. “What’s changed?”

Mako shrugged. “The Marshal has his reasons. I’m sure you’ll receive a full briefing once you’re fully operational.”

Raleigh considered her words. Marshal Stacker Pentecost had never been one to needlessly withhold information from those under his command--human _or_ Titan. Mako Mori was likely correct. It was in his programming to uphold the mission anyway.

He just wished he knew more. Especially if he was going to have to trust a new pilot with this mission.

_New pilot._ He didn’t like how that sounded. That definitely wasn’t in his programming.

“May I ask you something?” Mako Mori asked suddenly.

“Of course. I’m an open book.”

Her nose wrinkled slightly at the use of the phrase. He would’ve been worried he’d used it wrong if the meaning wasn’t stored securely in his memory banks. “What’s that writing on your data core mean?”

Raleigh had seen the way that Mako looked at him earlier. He was used to that expression; he was, even for a Vanguard, _a character._ Yancy had liked that about him. Other people sometimes found it confusing. And if she thought he was eccentric already, what he was about to tell her was only going to confirm that belief.

“That’s my name,” he said. “Raleigh. Pilot Becket didn’t feel comfortable calling me Gipsy and he said ‘Danger’ was something a ten-year-old would call his Titan. He said I looked like a Raleigh. I still don’t know what that means, but I like it.”

 “Do you prefer to be called Raleigh?”

“If you’re comfortable with that.”

“All right. Raleigh, then.”

They didn’t talk much after that as she finished removing the rust. He felt more mobile after the fact, but it was only a 5-10% improvement. His arm was still severed and his joints were in _serious_ need of lubrication. But even 5-10% improvement was an improvement. “We’ll work on your torso tomorrow,” Mako said as she started putting her tools away. “Do you prefer to be powered on during repairs?”

“If at alll possible. You know, most people don’t ask.” He was impressed she had. She’d already gotten his attention by agreeing to call him Raleigh; this made her _very_ interesting.

“Some other Titans I’ve worked with prefer it. You should probably power down until tomorrow. You’re going to experience inefficient power use until we can get this fixed.”

“Understood. I’ll see you tomorrow, Miss Mori.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Raleigh.”

Being called by his name after so long felt strange. It felt good, but strange. A great many things felt strange, from the missing parts of his chassis to the long-dead neural link.

Five years, four months.

_What did they do to his body?_

They probably buried him. Raleigh wondered if they would tell him where. He could visit his pilot’s grave that way. That was something people did, wasn’t it? To say goodbye? The deceased couldn’t hear them, of course, but as he understood, it was a good source of closure for humans. Maybe it would be closure for him, too.

He just hoped his new pilot, whoever they were, would understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I'm super uncreative, so right now the only mental image of Titan!Raleigh I have is "Vanguard looking chassis but he's a blue boy with a gold eye." Any input as to what the heck a G. Danger looking Titan would be is welcome.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr at screechthemighty for periodic Titanfall blogging and frequent Pacific Rim blogging.


End file.
